|
Hi Peter,
as you know I have had my fair share of guiding issues with my MX but have perfect guiding on my PME. Some of the things I did to sort my issues were as follows.
1. do PEC via Pempro. Do this a couple of times and make sure you get good results. I think you have done this before but just check. Try guiding without PEC enabled first. Then try it with it enabled. Monitor the effects. Make sure you recalibrate between each guiding run.
2. Do a 300 point model, get your pointing very close to the refracted pole. I have my PA so close I get no reported error. Now that means my Dec rarely moves off the line. It will also mean you can then use Protrack effectively. Protrack does not work well with poor data. Try the guiding with and without again. Make sure to recalibrate the guiding between each guiding run again.
3. Check all your cabling and in particular cables going through the mount. I found putting too many cables in the mount causes issues with guiding. Make sure you cables have some slack between the scope and the saddle plate. Check for balance. Having a cable too long might well catch and cause these sort of issues.
4. Check with different software. It you want to eliminate software as a problem then go and use another guide software. Check the results against each other. Do this on a night when the guiding is acting up on one. It will tell you if the software is the cause of the problem.
5. I doubt this is a mechanical problem with crud. Your mount is a huge mount and would not be affected by tiny amounts of crud. However for the sake of completeness just check your drives for dirt accumulation.
6. Eliminate wind gust and seeing conditions. If you typically have bad seeing this might well be contributing to the problem more than you think. Wind also can be problematic with heavier loads, even small buffeting wind can cause some issues but not likely. A wind shade will prevent this from occurring.
I tend to think this is more of a mechanical issue going on here, but the main thing is to cover all the bases. Do things with and without options enabled. That will get to the root cause of the problem.
|